VERY HARD CASH.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND."

PROLOGUE.

IN a snowy villa, with a sloping lawn, just
outside the great commercial seaport, Barkington,
there lived, a few years ago, a happy family.
A lady, middle aged, but still charming; two
young friends of hers; and a periodical visitor.

The lady was Mrs. Dodd; her occasional visitor
was her husband; her friends were her son
Edward, aged twenty, and her daughter Julia,
nineteen; the fruit of a misalliance.

Mrs. Dodd was originally Miss Fountain, a
young lady well born, high bred, and a denizen of
the fashionable world. Under a strange
concurrence of circumstances she coolly married the
captain of an East Indiaman. The deed done,
and with her eyes open, for she was not, to say,
in love with him, she took a judicious line; and
kept it; no hankering after Mayfair, no talking
about Lord "This" and Lady "That," to
commercial gentlewomen; no amphibiousness. She
accepted her place in society, reserving the right
to embellish it with the graces she had gathered
in a higher sphere. In her home, and in her
person, she was little less elegant than a
countess; yet nothing more than a merchant-
captain's wife: and she reared that commander's
children, in a suburban villa, with the manners
which adorn a palace. When they happen to
be there.

This lady had a bugbear: viz. Slang. She
could not endure the smart technicalities
current; their multitude did not overpower her
distaste; she called them "jargon;" "slang"
was too coarse a word for her to apply to slang:
she excluded many a good "racy idiom" along
with the real offenders; and monosyllables in
general ran some risk of having to show their
passports.

If this was pedantry, it went no further; she
was open, free, and youthful with her young
pupils; and had the art to put herself on their
level; often, when they were quite young she
would feign infantine ignorance, in order to hunt
trite truth in couples with them, and detect, by
joint experiment, that rainbows cannot, or else
will not, be walked into, nor Jack-o'-lantern be
gathered like a cowslip; and that, dissect we the
vocal dog—its hair is like a lamb's—never so
skilfully, no fragment of palpable bark, no sediment
of tangible squeak, remains inside him to
bless the inquisitive little operator, &c. &c.

When they advanced from these elementary
branches to Languages, History, Tapestry, and
"What Not," she managed still to keep by their
side, learning with them, not just hearing them
lessons down from the top of a high tower of
maternity. She never checked their curiosity; but
made herself share it; never gave them, as so many
parents do, a white-lying answer; wooed their
affections with subtle though innocent art; thawed
their reserve; obtained their love, and retained
their respect. Briefly, a female Chesterfield;
her husband's lover after marriage, though not
before; and the mild monitress, the elder sister,
the favourite companion and bosom friend, of
both her children.

They were remarkably dissimilar; and perhaps
I may be allowed to preface the narrative of their
adventures by a delineation; as in country
churches an individual pipes the key-note, and
the tune comes raging after.

Edward, then, had a great calm eye, that was
always looking folk full in the face, mildly; his
countenance comely and manly, but no more;
too square for Apollo; but sufficed for John
Bull. His figure it was that charmed the curious
observer of male beauty. He was five feet ten;
had square shoulders, a deep chest, masculine
flank, small foot, high instep. To crown all this,
a head, overflowed by ripples of dark brown hair,
sat with heroic grace upon his solid white throat,
like some glossy falcon new lighted on a Parian
column.

This young gentleman had decided qualities,
positive and negative. He could walk up to a
five-barred gate, and clear it, alighting on the
other side like a fallen feather; could row all
day, and then dance all night; could fling a
cricket ball a hundred and six yards; had a lathe
and a tool-box, and would make you in a trice a
chair, a table, a doll, a nutcracker, or any other
movable, useful, or the very reverse. And could
not learn his lessons, to save his life.

His sister Julia was not so easy to describe.
Her figure was tall, lithe, and serpentine; her
hair the colour of a horse-chesnut fresh from its
pod; her ears tiny and shell-like, her eyelashes
long and silky; her mouth small when grave,
large when smiling; her eyes pure hazel by day, and